Cash, sadly, is not here to commemorate the event; he passed away eight and a half years ago, just a few months after his beloved wife, June Carter Cash, died. As the film Walk the Line, with its excellent performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, depicts, that relationship was never easy. But nothing in Cash’s life was. He rose from poverty, battled drug addiction for decades, saw the insides of jails and drunk tanks. Toward the end of his life, he found that the country music that he had championed had no room for him; his last decade, however, saw him release a series of albums that reimagined country music as what it always was—not pale, mindless pop, the stuff of the commercial stations, but instead a meaningful blend of traditions and ethnicities, and always with a strong demand for social justice accompanying the beat.

Were Johnny Cash alive today, he would doubtlessly be at the head of the Occupy Country Music movement. But then, he is alive today. Here are three timeless songs that prove the point: his anthem “Man in Black” from 1971, his pointed “San Quentin” from 1968, and, on a lighter note, “Jackson,” belted out by Johnny and June when the two were still newlyweds.